Most Oregonians did, that’s for sure. So, the appointed managers entrusted with preserving Oregon’s grand and diverse wildlife heritage need to reconvene and reverse course. Right away.

Or Gov. Kate Brown needs to intervene in defense of our wild animals and to uphold the will of Oregonians.

Today, there are only 90 wolves in the whole state. By any measure, and most of all by the metric of common sense, that is the very definition of endangered. Wolves deserve the protection that Oregon affords animals on the brink.

But the state Fish and Wildlife Commission has decreed otherwise. Turning back the clock a century, the commission has cracked open the door to trophy hunters who want to add another glass-eyed stuffed head to their living room wall. Commissioners voted to eliminate endangered-species protections for our wolves in big swaths of our wildlands.

As they say in the comedy shows, I’m not making this up. Ninety wolves. Go get ’em!

You can make up your own mind whether commissioners lived up to their responsibility. As they themselves put it: to protect and enhance Oregon’s fish and wildlife and their habitats for use and enjoyment by present and future generations.

Future generations. Ha! This is a nasty, back-door win for a small number of trophy hunters. A fatal loss for wolves. A thumb in the eye to countless thousands of Oregonians who understand the simple truth: The state’s eco-system has been imbalanced. Nature knows best.

Commissioners, do your job: Protect the 90.

And while you’re at it, you can reverse your equally wrong-headed decision to allow the wholesale slaughter by trophy hunters of all cougars living in target zones located on 6,236 square miles of Oregon’s wildlands.

Commissioners will say that lifting endangered species protection for wolves doesn’t automatically signal a return to trophy hunting. Then why do it? Perhaps in hopes that the people of Oregon will be busy paying attention to other matters as the demise of the wolf plays out step-by-step?

What a cynical, lopsided approach to governance.

Commissioners would like people to believe that 90 wolves are taking too many deer away from 1.7 million licensed hunters. Really — 90 vs. 1,700,000?

Either commissioners don’t understand nature, or don’t want you to. To the extent that wolves prey on deer, they remove the old and the weak. Hunters are gunning for the big and the strong. So which is the better strategy for healthy deer populations?

The truth is simple: Oregon’s native carnivores keep our ecosystems healthy and diverse. Countless eons of history prove it. Oregonians want wildlife to flourish. Wolves and cougars have a far better track record than these few appointed officials doing the bidding of trophy hunters.

Commissioners, please meet again and vote for nature, not against it. For all Oregonians, not just the few with “trophy” rooms.

Governor, please lend your good office to the cause. The people of Oregon deserve better than they got this time.” ~Scott Beckstead

Scott Beckstead of Sutherlin is senior Oregon state director for the Humane Society of the United States. He can be reached at sbeckstead@humanesociety.org.

29 other scientists say Great Lakes wolves should stay protected under the Endangered Species Act ‪and they disagree with the idea that keeping wolves on the list increases public resentment.
In a statement Tuesday, the scientists said Great Lakes wolves should stay on the list for now. They question the adequacy of state management plans and contend the wolves still meet the legal definition of an endangered species‬.

Lifting government protection from wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin could be justified if and when the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “uses the best available science that justifies delisting,” 29 scientists from the U.S. and several other nations said in an open letter. “Currently it does not.”

The scientists also said they were responding to 26 colleagues who sent a letter last week to U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell saying it was time for wolves to lose their endangered status in the western Great Lakes, where their combined population is estimated at 3,700.
YAY!
Full story here

With a heavy heart and incredible disappointment, I chose this image to share with you today. The image contains a quote from one of the scientists betraying our wolves by urging the western Great Lakes population of gray wolves be removed from protections of the Endangered Species Act.

26 scientists, including Dave Mech of the University of Minnesota and Adrian Wydeven of the Timber Wolf Alliance, argue the species has successfully recovered in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin and should be delisted.
“It is in the best interests of gray wolf conservation and for the integrity of the Endangered Species Act for wolves to be delisted in the western Great Lakes states where biological recovery has occurred and where adequate regulatory mechanisms are in place to manage the species,” wrote the scientists in a letter delivered Wednesday to Sally Jewell, Secretary of the Department of Interior, and Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
More information can be found in this article.
This is our letter to Secretary Jewell regarding the delisting, and why we disagree with the recommendation of these scientists:
When Congress passed the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in 1973, it recognized that our rich natural heritage is of “aesthetic, ecological, educational, recreational, and scientific value to our Nation and its people.” It further expressed concern that many of our nation’s native plants and animals were in danger of becoming extinct, including wolves. With the exception of the red wolf and mexican gray wolf, the USFWS determined the wolves a recovered species in 2013, proclaiming that “the current listing for gray wolf, developed 35 years ago, erroneously included large geographical areas outside the species’ historical range”.
The wolf cannot possibly be considered a recovered species when the estimated population is only approximately 5,000 in the lower 48, occupies less than 10 percent of their historic range and when the Endangered Species Act dictates wolves be restored to a “significant portion” of that original range before they are ready for delisting.
“Historic range”, which, broadly stated, refers to the area a species occupied before humans began exterminating them. Yet in an interview with Lance Richardson, the Assistant Director for Endangered Species at the FWS, Gary Frazier said: “Range, is the range at the time at which we’re making a determination of whether a species is threatened or endangered.” In other words, range is where an animal lives at the particular moment the Fish and Wildlife Service decides to list it, not where it used to live before it was widely persecuted. This notion, coupled with delisting because of a taxonomic revision, a revision Fish and Wildlife Service previously rejected as representing “neither a scientific consensus nor the majority opinion of researchers on the taxonomy of wolves” is plainly undermining the ESA, as well as a convenient way for the USFWS to delist the gray wolf.
History has demonstrated that societal values ultimately determine the survival of a species as controversial as the wolf. Wolf management evokes a wide range of public attitudes, polarized views, and prolonged contention. Removing the gray wolf from the ESA is unsettling to most Americans who enjoy seeing the wolf on the landscape and who understand how essential they are for maintaining ecosystems. Removing the gray wolf from the protection of the ESA is unlike lifting protections for any other species. Blatant hostility, as well as the vilification of these essential predators, coupled with the very poor management by individual states during delisting underscores the need for continued protection. Because of this mismanagement, and ongoing horrific slaughter of wolves allowed by individual states, those who advocate for wolves are not only driven to keep wolves protected, but will also be electing government officials who agree with their views and show compassion for this misunderstood carnivore.
The mismanagement of wolves:
Last year, H.B. 470 was signed into law creating a wolf control board in Idaho with the explicit purpose of killing all but 150 of the state’s remaining 650 wolves. State officials would have preferred total extermination—“If every wolf in Idaho disappeared I wouldn’t have a problem with it,” the new Fish and Game commissioner declared, at his confirmation hearing.
The fact is that in 2011, when the government began stripping wolves of their protection under the Endangered Species Act, transferring “management” to the states an “all-out” war against the wolf began, and by December 2014 over 3,400 wolves had been slaughtered in just six states, more than 1,956 in Idaho and Montana alone.
In Wisconsin, the population of wolves was just 800 in 2011, yet in a matter of three years (since delisting), Wisconsin has lost at least 518 wolves to legalized hunting, hounding, trapping and annual unenforced quota overkills.The 518 wolves killed does not include wolves killed at the request of livestock operators for “depredation control” (170) or wolves killed on roadways every year (25). In addition, it is difficult for agency staff to estimate how many wolves are poached, which is estimated, conservatively at 100 a year. Considering annual wolf pup mortality at up to 75 percent, and the human take of wolves in Wisconsin, this has been a disaster of catastrophic proportions. Hardly a wolf management plan integrating the “best available science”.
This moral bankruptcy and ineptness is not a way to treat a species recently removed from the ESA.
Until our state governments can evolve, stop catering to whims of the few, listen to the majority of their constituents, and follow good science our wolves need to remain under government protections. Period.

Like this:

On November 19th early in the morning while it was still dark the French police raided an apartment in St Denis, north Paris. BBC News was reporting as the drama unfolded. What it failed to mention was that of the Research, Assistance, Intervention and Deterrence (Raid) unit the first to go in was Diesel, a female Belgian Shepherd dog.

According to The Guardian newspaper “Diesel had been sent in to the apartment ahead of officers to ascertain how dangerous the situation was when it was shot dead.”

She was just 7 years old.

There is so much wrong with this – where do I start?

First of all, Diesel was not an ‘it’. She was a she. Calling her ‘it’ indicates that she is an object of no significance.

Then let’s talk about the early evening television news in which the raid was reported by various on-the-spot correspondents. I did not see…

A petition asking for emergency Endangered Species Act listing for Prince of Wales Island wolves was essentially denied by the U.S.Department of the Interior office in Anchorage.

USFWS Assistant Regional Director stated that an emergency listing is not something that can be petitioned by outside groups, and is a process “left to the discretion of the Secretary of the Interior.” Secretary Jewell is expected to make a decision regarding protecting these wolves under the ESA by the end of the year. Raise your voice for these imperiled wolves. Please partake in the actions within this blog aimed at encouraging Secretary Sally Jewell to protect the little dark wolves on Prince of Wales islands.

As always, a warm welcome, and thankyou in advance for being a voice for this imperiled species. On this blog post you will find several courses of action. If you are not on twitter, please scroll to the bottom (past the list of tweets) for other actions. The storm begins at 2:00 p.m. EST on November 9th. Feel free to send off these tweets as often as you like thereafter.

Thankyou for tweeting on behalf of the Alexander Archipelago Wolves. Please consider contacting Secretary Jewell with a phone call, an email and a letter. Below you will find a sample letter, feel free to use it as is, or personalize to your liking.

Here are a few ways you can contact the U.S. Department of the Interior and Secretary Jewell:

Please protect the Alexander Archipelago Wolves on Prince of Wales islands under the Endangered Species Act. Scientists and conservationists assert that the Archipelago wolf population has plummeted to a dangerously low population, and that distributions are no longer sufficient to maintain genetic viability. More importantly, existing regulations (which have not been adhered to) with the failing taxpayer supported logging projects on Prince of Wales are not adequate enough protection to ensure persistence of population numbers of this unique species.

This alarming population decline is most immediately caused by the direct take of wolves from significant poaching and the unsustainable legal take, but the underlying cause is extensive logging and roads that initiate many harmful effects, including the overharvest of wolves. Without immediate policy changes on the part of the state and federal governments, the Alexander Archipelago Wolves on Prince of Wales and satellite islands future is grim, as they appear to be on their way to extinction.

Wolves are a symbol of wilderness and ecological integrity. They are important in their own right and as a key part of a functioning predator- prey system. In Southeast Alaska, wolves bring significant economic benefits to communities as part of the package that lures more than one million visitors to the Tongass National Forest every year and that contributes more than $1 billion to the Southeast Alaska economy.

The time has come for the Forest Service to manage the Tongass for a host of public values that support the Southeast Alaska tourism. The time has come for this diminished, and unique, population of wolves to finally get the protection they so desperately need if they are to survive.

Please provide protection for the POW wolves under the ESA. Thankyou for your time and consideration of this extremely urgent matter,

Your name

If you are on Facebook please post to U.S. Department of the Interior (or tag them in a post). Please use the hashtag #PrinceOfWalesWolves on your post. Use any one of the images throughout this blog, just tap on image, open image, then select save. If you are on Instagram, please tag the interior in the same way. Be sure to use the hashtag #PrinceOfWalesWolves.

Images are also posted on our event page, feel free to use any in your tags.